A COUPLE have told how their new £60,000 garden room was practically demolished when a car ploughed into their house.

Sidney Busby, 86, was only feet from where the Volkswagen Tiguan smashed through the wall of their home in Marlow Road, Fawley.

It was the first of two accidents on the same stretch of road in less than a week.

The crash happened just after 2pm on Wednesday last week when the woman driving the 4x4 towards Marlow swerved to avoid a car coming the other way.

Her car left the road and hit a boulder outside the Busbys’ neighbour’s house before coming through their leylandii hedge and travelling 20ft across their garden and smashing into their detached home. The garden room, which was recently converted from a conservatory, was badly damaged.

Mr Busby, an insurance broker, had just returned from his office in High Wycombe when the accident happened. His wife Gillian was out shopping.

He said: “I had only just come in and was glancing at the paper in the lounge. I usually sit in the garden room.

“I heard this almighty crash which sounded like an earthquake, this continuous rumbling, so I got up, went to the door and there was the car in our garden room, just inside the window.

“I was stunned because I thought the noise was coming from the road. I was in total shock.”

He said there was rubble everywhere. The wheels of the VW were still turning and the vehicle’s airbags had been deployed.

Mr Busby said another driver who had narrowly avoided being hit by the car stopped and came to help.

“He managed to drag the woman out of the car while I staggered about not knowing what to do or what was going on,” he said.

The police and an ambulance arrived and the woman was taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital with minor injuries.

The Busbys had only recently seen their garden room completed after five months of building work. They had bought new furniture for the room and spent £2,500 on having a sofa re-upholstered.

Mr Busby said: “It cost thousands of pounds and we had just had it finished and were enjoying it. It was lovely looking out on the garden.

“I suppose it did save the house from being knocked down.”

His wife, who was shopping at Tesco in Henley, found out about the accident when a neighbour approached her in the supermarket and asked why an ambulance and a police car were parked outside her house.

Mrs Busby said: “I said, ‘Sidney’s at home’ so I rang him and he told me half our garden room had been knocked down.

“I was devastated and really upset because we spent nearly a year getting it perfect and it was the best room in the house. We spent a lot of time and money and in a second it was gone.”

As well as the damage to the house, the Busbys’ hedge now has a huge hole where the car came through it and the couple plan to erect a wall to protect themselves in case of more accidents.

Mrs Busby said: “I feel safe in the main house but I won’t feel safe in that room until we have had something more secure put there.”

Mr Busby said. “I won’t sit in the garden room now. I would be silly to go into that room.”

The couple say a 40mph limit should be introduced on the road and Mr Busby has complained to the local authority.

“It’s a disgrace,” he said. “Motorists see the national speed limit sign and they go as fast as they can, like bats out of hell. Accidents are bound to happen at the speed they do.

“The 40mph limit that finishes just before Toad Hall garden centre needs to be extended at least as far as Henley Management College. The whole road needs doing.

“I shall be writing to the council to see whether anything can be done, as will my neighbours.

“When we moved here 25 years ago, there were cars passing every now and then but now traffic pours along all the time. It really has become extremely bad.”

His wife called for speed bumps to be installed. She said: “There is a bus stop outside our house — surely you don’t put a bus stop on a road where you can go 60mph?”

The speed limit on this stretch of Marlow Road was reviewed in 2004 by Buckinghamshire County Council which decided there were two few homes to justify reducing it.

A council spokeswoman said: “In the last three years, there have been two reported injury accidents along this stretch. This is a good crash record for a road which carries about 6,000 vehicles per day. There are no further speed limit reviews planned.”